Top 20 Stars of the Week, November 12

This has been another interesting week online, especially with the latest posts flying around about selling RSS subscribers and what not.

If you are new to this blog and this weekly post, each Monday I post a top 15 list of my starred items from the previous 7 days, as starred in my feed reader, Google Reader. This week it happens to be a top 20 list. This post also serves as a week in review recap of sorts as well, so keep reading and you will find the top 20 stars of the week at the bottom. My subscriber feeds that I read (not that are subscribed to my blog) are up to 339 now, I think I added about 15 this week. I can get through just about all of them each day in one way or another, but with this many, I may have to start a top 15 dud (not dude) list as well.

New Free Footer Link Love Added

I just finished a new footer of sorts that will be an extension to my post, Add Value to Your Blog, Offer an RSS Feed in Reverse, where I use the feeds in my Google Reader to create a blog roll from my public reader feeds. I added this to just show what I think are some of the better articles posted for the week.

At the moment, it will show the three feeds, my shared items, my starred items, and blogs of interest. The last one is a list of blogs I find interesting and wanted to offer some free link love. What is different about that page over a normal blog roll is that it offers a combined feed for all the blogs on the blog roll and a link to each individual blog. Now, if Google will just get it together and make these “pages” where we can customize them and add Adsense feeds to them you will probably see everyone using them. It generates some cool content and is a need way to keep an updated list of the movers and shakers in your particular interest field.

I haven’t figured out what the problem with viewing these feeds in Safari is (all other browsers look fine), just can’t get them to show up, so if anyone has a quick suggestion that would be great. What I really wanted was the Hemingway footer blocks in plugin form but I don’t think one exists, so this will have to do for now.

This Past Week in Review

This past week saw the first annual BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas and from all the posts about the events, it looked like it was a great conference and I will have a post about it later in the week. There is still talk about another PageRank (PR) update over the weekend from Google from a few different blog, although we didn’t see any change ourselves.

Something else that just came up is a new money making scheme exposed by an article, This Months Stupid Cow Award, and Being A Fake Is Harmful For Millions of People Who Want To Learn How To Make Money Online, about selling RSS readers. Some seem to have no problem with, but for the most part I think legitimate bloggers have voiced their opinion in opposition to this practice. I think it is going to bring the wrath of Google in the form of PR penalties down the road, and perhaps even Feedburner for trying to sell RSS subscribers (real or fake, couldn’t tell), besides deceiving the readers of the participating blogs.

Top 15 20 Stars of the week of Nov 5th-11th

Attack of the 20%’ers

via Official Google Reader Blog by dolapo on 11/6/07

At Google, 20% time is core to our culture and today’s Reader release incorporates features developed by two engineers in their 20% time. Those two engineers would be us!

Answers to Questions for Rand: Round 2

via SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog by randfish on 11/6/07

Posted by randfish

Sorry it’s taken me so long to get to all of these. The past few days trying to get grounded after a week in Stockholm have been even

So who’s doing all this searching anyway?

via Compete Blog by Jeremy Crane on 11/7/07

For the past few weeks I’ve been peeling back the layers on the search onion to understand a few questions. How effective are each of the engines? How do people use search? Who is using search?

SitePoint Afffiliate Program pays $98.00

via AdesBlog.com by Ades on 11/7/07

We all have tried Amazon’s affiliate program with no or little success, didn’t we? But if your visitors are mainly web programmers, you might want to give Sitepoint Affiliate Program a try (www.sitepoint.com/affiliate/). Because the earnings for every book

Court talks scents in trademark case

via TameBay by Sue Bailey on 11/7/07

eBay have won their suit for trademark dilution against perfumebay.com. Three judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court’s ruling from September 2005 that the similarity of the two domain names could encourage users to

Thriving as a B-list Blogger

via Bruce Clay, Inc. Blog by Lisa Barone on 11/8/07

Leading this one are Jeremy Wright and Allen Stern to talk about attitudes regarding B-list bloggers.

Jeremy says there’s not a lot of value being added by A-listers. There are better sites than TechCrunch and Read/WriteWeb out there. Blogging is about creating your personal A-list and reaching your own

Are You a Link Whore?

via Randa Clay Design by Randa on 11/8/07

Since the whole I Follow Movement thing last spring, there have been lists of blogs published with titles like “10 High PR I Follow Blogs” encouraging readers to visit and comment, and “be sure it doesn’t look too spammy or it might get deleted.” Now that page rank has

10 Reasons I Delete Your Email

via Shoemoney – Skills To Pay The Bills by ShoeMoney on 11/8/07

1) Start it with “Dear Sirs,”

Seriously…

2) Spell my name wrong.

You want to make misspellings? Thats

10 Reasons You Are Not Getting Comments

via Wayne Liew Dot Com by Wayne Liew on 11/7/07

I am sure that every blogger loves to see comments on their blogs. I am somehow lucky to get comments in each and every one of my posts on Wayne Liew Dot Com but some bloggers is facing problems

StumbleUpon Get Their Own (Unofficial) Top 100 List

via Average Joe Blogger by Nate (Average Joe Blogger) on 11/6/07

Top100 lists have always been an intriguing look into what makes a super user. Whether they be the top money makers, top digg users or top whatever, they’re always fascinating.

5 Reasons Why Blogging Sucks

via Blogging Bits by Mohsin on 11/7/07

You thought blogging is all fun and money? Well, that’s not quite true.

Instigator blog published an excellent list of not-so-fancy aspects of freelancing, so I thought since blogging, and especially problogging, is a freelance activity, I’ll list the cons of problogging.

Blogger’s Guide to Creating Better Content

via Vandelay Website Design by Vandelay Design on 11/8/07

Yesterday I wrote about the effects of creative blog content. Now that you know about all the benefits that come with creative content you may be wondering what you can do to improve your posts.

Use Feedburner Statistics to Interpret Reader Habits

via ProBlogger Blog Tips by Darren Rowse on 11/9/07

Can your Feedburner stats reveal habits of your readers that could help you make your blogging more effective at reaching them? Guest poster Max Pool finds out.

As we know FeedBurner counts can naturally fluctuate.

The 7 deadly sins of instant messaging

via 43 Folders by Chanpory on 11/9/07

I heart instant messaging, but I heart it too much. If you’re a chat addict like me, you understand the lure. It’s convenient, connecting you to faraway buddies with little cost. It’s safe, releasing you from

Blog World 2007: Paid Text Links, Google, and You

via W Revenue dot Com by Scott on 11/9/07

I’m at Blog World Expo today in Las Vegas. It’s a new and fairly small conference, but it is packed full of sessions and a lot of big time Internet business folks are here: Leo Laporte (of TechTV and TWiT Podcast fame) gave the

BloggingZoom Sucks More Than BlogRush

via Web 2.0 How-To Spot-er by TheSpot-er on 11/9/07

BloggingZoom is a hot new comer to social networking scene that allows bloggers exchange traffic by presenting their content in relevant location. While it doesn’t perform same function like

12 habits of a successful blogger

via bLuefRogX by bLuefRoGX on 11/7/07

I’ve always wondered – “How did they make it to the top?” If someone could tell me the 10 ways to make me a popular blogger and make everyone link to me. I read and I read but

12 Link Building Tactics For 2008

via Performancing.com – Helping Bloggers Succeed by Ahmed Bilal on 11/10/07

As 2007 turns into 2008 (yes, its more than a month away but you can’t fault me for preparing right now, can you?), it’s worth taking a hard look at our blogging and promotion strategies and how those will evolve in the future.

5 ‘Less Used’ Ways To Get New Subscribers

via Blogging Tips by Ramkarthik on 11/10/07

It is always a blogger’s dream to get many subscribers. They set goals every month. Say, I want to reach 500 subscribers this month and I’m at 100 right now, then I, not only have to write extremely

Everything You Could Possibly Want to Know About Social Media

via Vandelay Website Design by Vandelay Design on 11/11/07

Thank you to everyone who submitted post(s) to this group writing project! There are over 50 articles here that I’m sure anyone can learn from. Some focus on a particular social networking site while others

That is about it for this weeks top 15 (or 20 this week). There are some very interesting articles on the list if you haven’t had a chance to read them yet.

What was on your link list this week that really stood out? As always I would love to hear your comments below.